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Psalms

About this book
Psalm 144

1 By David. The Lord, my Protector, deserves praise—the one who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war, 2 who loves me and is my stronghold, my refuge and my deliverer, my shield and the one in whom I take shelter, who makes nations submit to me. 3 O Lord, of what importance is the human race that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind that you should be concerned about them?⁠ 4 People are like a vapor,⁠ their days like a shadow that disappears.⁠ 5 O Lord, make the sky sink and come down. Touch the mountains and make them smolder. 6 Hurl lightning bolts and scatter the enemy. Shoot your arrows and rout them. 7 Reach down from above. Grab me and rescue me from the surging water, from the power of foreigners 8 who speak lies, and make false promises. 9 O God, I will sing a new song to you. Accompanied by a ten-stringed instrument, I will sing praises to you, 10 the one who delivers kings and rescued David his servant from a deadly sword. 11 Grab me and rescue me from the power of foreigners who speak lies and make false promises. 12 Then our sons will be like plants, that quickly grow to full size. Our daughters will be like corner pillars, carved like those in a palace. 13 Our storehouses will be full, providing all kinds of food. Our sheep will multiply by the thousands and fill our pastures. 14 Our cattle will be weighted down with produce. No one will break through our walls, no one will be taken captive, and there will be no terrified cries in our city squares. 15 How blessed are the people who experience these things. How blessed are the people whose God is the Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 144:4 and Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:2

Hebrew Bible · Rabbinic

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Summary

Psalm 144 compares people to a vapor without any further detail. Rabbinic tradition in Ecclesiastes Rabbah interprets that as a phrase David left unfinished, and reads Ecclesiastes as Solomon providing the explanation.

Passages

Psalm 144:4

Hebrew Bible
3 O Lord, of what importance is the human race that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind that you should be concerned about them? 4 People are like a vapor, their days like a shadow that disappears. 5 O Lord, make the sky sink and come down. Touch the mountains and make them smolder.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:2

Rabbinic · Aggadah
“Vanity of vanities [havel havalim]” – Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Aḥa: David made a statement and did not explain it, but his son Solomon explained it. Solomon made a statement and did not explain it, but his father David explained it. David said: “Man is like hevel” (Psalms 144:4); to what hevel [is man compared]? If it is to the hevel [heat] of an oven, it has significance. If it is to the hevel of a stove, it has significance. His son Solomon came and explained: “Vanity of vanities [havel havalim], said Kohelet.”
700–950 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Ecclesiastes Rabbah

References

“... Ecclesiastes 1:2 exudes the pessimistic nature of the book of Ecclesiastes. The midrashic passage, though, ventures to demonstrate the conceptual proximity between Ecclesiastes and Psalms. This is achieved through a fabricated textual dialogue where David’s thoughts are illumined by Solomon. The combined patterns of questions-answers, the arrangement of the biblical verses in the form of a dialogue, and the allegorical meaning of Ps 144:4 that matches conceptually to the contextual meaning of Eccl 1:2 create the dialectical-transformative intertextuality of the following passage. [...] The Rabbis noticed the semantic closeness between Ps 144:4 and Eccl 1:2 and claimed that David first had expressed the notion of futility through Ps 144:4. Solomon, though, explained the hidden meaning of Ps 144:4 by writing a treatise on futility, and in particular through Eccl 1:2. The midrashic text transmits the rabbinic understanding about man and his nature and achieves the longed-for connection between Eccl 1:2 and Ps 144:4 by explaining that just as man’s life is like breath, that is, is fleeting, so also the world is ephemeral and permeated with futility. The theme of futility thus changes from a controversial one to one descriptive of life. ...”
Michail Kitsos, “Examples of Intertextuality in Ecclesiastes Rabbah: An Examination of the Book of Psalms in Ecclesiastes Rabbah with Methodological Nuances,” in Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually, ed. Katharine Dell and Will Kynes (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 273–274.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Psalm 144:4 and Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:2

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